Patient Exam Process Time Correspond to Appointment Schedule

[amira_khablein]

[ FlexSim HC 5.1.0 ]

I have set up a specific schedule upon which patients will arrive into my model clinic based upon their appointment time. The appointments are not a uniform length or time distribution and I only want them to be seen until the next appointment time. (ex. If the next appointment is 30 min later that is how long the process time should be, but if the next appointment is 15 min later then i want the process time to be 15 min). Is it possible to set something like this up for one of the steps in the track to have their process time be variable and contingent upon the appointment schedule?

[Matthew_Gillespie · Accepted solution]

Yes, but it requires a bit of coding. Here is a sample model where the processing time is being set based on how much time is left before the next appointment. The code is all in the Processing Time field of activity 20.

[amira_khablein]

So if a patient arrives late then that will also influence their time with the provider? If they were in a 30 min appointment block but arrived 10 min late-- the provider would only give them until the next appointment block-- which would make it a 20 min appointment?

[amira_khablein]

I was also wondering-- if using this appointment processing times and there is a scheduled break in the day in a staggered fashion for providers, can you trigger the providers to finish their patient task before going on break. In the appointment schedules would I need to break it up in a specific way? Its currently set up so that the patient appointment begins at 01:12:00 and their lunch is scheduled for 01:12:30 but I'm concerned that the patient is being left in the room while they take their lunch since the next patient isn't scheduled until 01:13:00.

[Matthew_Gillespie]

This should work.

[Matthew_Gillespie]

This sounds pretty hard to do and would depend on how your model is set up.

[amira_khablein]

What if I don't want that? I want the Dr to stay for the entire designated time chunk rather than not seeing a patient because they were late. I have 3 dr visit lengths of 15, 30, and 45 min. those are the times i want the dr to be in the room with the patient no matter what-- i'm not sure what the best way to make this happen is, can i assign a specific steps process time to a PCI or how can this happen?

[Matthew_Gillespie]

You can put dynamic values and code into the Processing Time field, but as soon as the activity starts the field is evaluated and an actual number needs to be returned. So it depends on how you want your model to work. If you want PCI 1 to always have a 15 min processing time and PCI 2 to always have a 30 min processing time I would just put those values on a label and then have the field read the label value to know how long to process them for.

[mark_s21]

This is quite a common occurrence in HC. The break would be shifted, and overtime would likely be incurred at the end of the day. Is there still no solution for this?

[cliff_king]

Unfortunately, there were two separate questions asked in this post:

1. How to define a process time based on a patient's scheduled time slot (15 min process time for 15 min appointment slots, 30 min process time for 30 min appointment slots, etc.) and this is an easy solution of simply assigning labels to the patient in the Appointment Schedule table that specifies the appropriate process time.
2. How to have staff finish their patient care before going on break. I'm not sure why Matthew said this is "pretty hard to do" since it is a standard feature of our Shift Scheduler, so maybe the question needs to be reasked more specifically in a new post. Would you mind reasking your specific question @Mark S2, in a seperate Answer's Post please?